


patron saint of insufferable fools

by yugto



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, Inaccurate Catholicism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23178796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yugto/pseuds/yugto
Summary: Before starting classes at the Officers' Academy, each student selects a patron saint to guide their academic journey at the entrance ceremony.Really, Felix doesn't know what anyone else expected out of Sylvain.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	patron saint of insufferable fools

**Author's Note:**

> this one goes out to all my lapsed catholics. who remembers confirmation class? i barely do my dudes that was seven years ago! anyway please enjoy. note that blink-and-you'll-miss-it spoilers about seteth's identity follow.

Two days after Felix’s seventeenth birthday, a messenger brings his letter from the Officers’ Academy to his front door. In looping cursive, it reads:

_Young Master Fraldarius,_

_On behalf of the Officers’ Academy faculty and staff, I write to express our heartfelt congratulations on your acceptance to the Officers’ Academy_ . _We are excited to welcome you to the Academy, and look forward to your many accomplishments as a student at our esteemed institution._

_At the Officers’ Academy entrance and confirmation ceremony, each student selects a patron saint to guide their academic journey. Your family, friends, and loved ones are welcome at this ceremony. In preparation for your confirmation ceremony, please peruse the attached packet._

_Please note that all students must arrive by 20 Lone Wolf Moon at the latest. The ceremony will take place on 30 Lone Wolf Moon. We look forward to your arrival._

_Warm regards,_

_Seteth, Assistant to the Archbishop_

Felix's acceptance to the Officers’ Academy isn’t all that surprising—being the now-heir to Fraldarius territory, his entrance exams and application were more a formality than anything else. All that being said, as he thumbs through the packet attached to the letter, he’s not sure why his father is trying to turn this mundane occasion into some kind of… father-son bonding moment. 

“Ah, the confirmation ceremony,” says his old man, not-so-subtly reading the letter over Felix’s shoulder. “I remember Glenn’s ceremony well; he chose Saint Macuil to guide his path. Have you considered yet which patron saint you’d like to guide your journey?”

Of course he goes straight to talking about Glenn, Felix thinks. It’s not like he’d been expecting a “congratulations on your acceptance” or an “I’m proud of you” or anything ridiculous like that. After all, his acceptance had only been a formality—nothing less, nothing more. 

(Anyway, having been perhaps seven or eight when Glenn entered the Officers’ Academy, Felix remembers absolutely nothing about Glenn’s confirmation ceremony itself. Mostly, he remembers crying when Glenn hugged him goodbye before the ceremony began, and manfully attempting to suppress his sniffles when Glenn walked away to line up alongside the rest of the Blue Lions as the ceremony started.)

Flashbacks aside, Felix would rather die than continue this conversation, so he folds the letter back up and just says, “No.” Thankfully, Rodrigue stops talking, and the Fraldarius men fall back into their usual state of awkward silence. (Somehow, the quiet is still less awkward than if the Fraldarius men had attempted to have an actual conversation.)

* * *

The packet attached to Felix’s acceptance letter was probably transcribed by hand by some underpaid monk at Garreg Mach, judging by the ink stains that the writer was simply too tired to clean up. It turns out to be full of information about the saints, with a couple of pages at the end detailing the confirmation ceremony mentioned in the letter. Felix spends a grand total of three minutes perusing the packet before his eyes catch the line _He was also an indomitable warrior who slew countless foes on countless battlefields_ on the page about Saint Indech. _Good enough for me,_ he thinks, and throws the packet into the trunk he’s supposed to be packing, never to be touched again. 

_Got into the Officers’ Academy. Suppose you did too_ , he writes to Sylvain later that afternoon. _My old man thinks it’s safer for all of us to travel to Garreg Mach together. If you’re not too busy ‘saying your goodbyes’ to every woman on your estate, I’ll be leaving for Fhirdiad in nine days’ time._

* * *

Eight days later, Sylvain arrives in Fraldarius territory, a carriage of his belongings trailing behind him. Ever the polite houseguest, he unloads a few wheels of Gautier cheese from the carriage and presents it to Rodrigue with a polite “Margrave Gautier sends his regards”.

“Thank you, Sylvain; please send my regards to your father,” says Rodrigue. “If you’re looking for Felix, he’s upstairs. I believe he’s still packing his belongings.”

Rodrigue’s assessment isn’t wrong, but feels like a vast understatement; when Sylvain enters Felix’s room, he’s overcome by the sense that a very concentrated tornado hit it. At the sound of the door opening, Felix pokes his head up from behind his queen-sized bed, which is piled high with clothes and various objects. “Oh. Hello, Sylvain.”

“Hello to you too, Fe. Did you even start packing before today?” Sylvain crosses his arms and surveys the room. The only things that have actually made it into Felix’s trunk so far are the informational packet Garreg Mach sent out with their admission letters and a scattered assortment of socks and smallclothes. 

Felix has the grace to look embarrassed, although he lacks the grace to do much else. “I was working on a new technique in the training hall and lost track of time.”

“For the past _week?_ ” Sylvain says incredulously, picking his way across the floor to the bed. “Saints above, Fraldarius, you really need to prioritize how you spend your time. Here, let me help you pack. We don’t wanna keep Ingrid and His Highness waiting, do we?”

Felix mumbles something that sounds incredibly similar to _does it look like I care?_ Sylvain blithely ignores him and picks up a stack of uniform shirts from the bed, asking, “Have you decided which saint you’re going to choose as your patron?” 

“Saint Indech, probably.” Felix dives back behind the bed, resurfacing with a couple of whetstones. He places them on the bed and disappears again; his voice floats up, “Hey, put those shirts in the trunk, would you?”

“That’s the warrior one, right? Of course _you_ would pick the warrior saint,” Sylvain says, stacking the shirts neatly in the trunk. He sees a stack of mostly-folded uniform pants on the bed and puts them into the trunk too, for good measure. “Why did I even bother asking?”

Felix pops up again, holding a dagger tucked into a little belt, and drops it onto the empty space left by his clothes. “Good question. Why did you? Hey, put that coat in the trunk.”

Sylvain finds the coat in question slung across the back of Felix’s desk chair, folds it neatly, and tucks it into the trunk, asking, “What are you even looking for back there?”

“Sword polish,” Felix says matter-of-factly. Sylvain hears something being pushed around, then a small dust cloud appears from behind the bed; moments later, Felix lets out a monster sneeze. Sylvain suppresses the urge to roll his eyes, then remembers that Felix can’t see him, and rolls his eyes to his heart’s content.

“You know, you could have asked one of the maids to pack for you,” he points out sensibly, as Felix’s hand pokes up from behind the bed and deposits two cans of sword polish on top of the sheets. “At this very moment, Juliette is probably having an aneurysm because Young Master Fraldarius is _packing his own trunk_ before he goes off to the Officers’ Academy.”

“It’s not like I’m going to have an army of servants to wait on me at the academy. I should get used to doing things for myself.” This is a completely logical point, but it is extremely difficult to take Felix seriously when he emerges from behind the bed, covered in dust. Sylvain bursts out in laughter; Felix launches himself across the bed and punches him in the stomach for his crimes.

* * *

Despite the prolonged scuffle that follows, Felix manages to finish packing by the next morning by some miracle of the Goddess, and he and Sylvain depart for Fhirdiad on time.

“I’ll be there for the ceremony,” Rodrigue says to Felix, and pulls him into a brief, awkward hug. Felix stands there stiffly, arms at his sides. Sylvain thinks he can see Felix’s eye twitching. “Safe travels, my son.”

“Yeah, yeah, see you in two weeks, old man,” says Felix, shrugging ungracefully out of Rodrigue’s embrace. “Come on, Gautier, we’ve got a long ride ahead of us.”

* * *

Sylvain’s not sure what he thinks of the Goddess, but he has to admit that She’s really got to be pulling some celestial strings for their childhood quartet. Despite the fact that they’re traveling with Dimitri and Dedue, whom Felix barely tolerates on a good day, and Ingrid, who tends to squabble with both Felix and Sylvain on a regular basis, no one has an all-out fight during the week-long journey from Fhirdiad to Garreg Mach. Felix is mostly just taciturn, and a shade sullen at times. Dedue tactfully avoids talking to anyone but Dimitri. Dimitri, well-meaning fool that he is, attempts to make friendly conversation with Felix, to no avail. Ingrid skirts neatly around talking about Glenn. Sylvain grins and cracks jokes about the barmaids along the way to lighten the mood. All in all, the week-long trip goes surprisingly smoothly. 

* * *

Although Felix threatens to castrate Sylvain no less than five times on the way over, everyone makes it to Garreg Mach alive. Dimitri emerges from the first House leader meeting of the year with some bad news.

“We have to start classes before school even _begins_?” Sylvain whines, sprawling over Felix’s bed. Felix neither asked for his presence nor gave any consent for Sylvain to remain in his room, and yet here he remains, sprawled over the carefully folded uniforms Felix had just received that morning. 

“Did you _read_ the packet at all, Gautier? Get up, you’re going to wrinkle my uniforms.”

“Like you care,” Sylvain grumbles, but rolls to the side, allowing Felix to yank his uniforms away and stuff them into the drawers along the wall. This action undoubtedly wrinkles the uniforms far worse than anything Sylvain could have done while lying on top of them. Graciously, Sylvain decides not to mention that, and continues, “The pronunciation of names is so weird, too. I pronounced Cichol like ‘sitchel’ in the dining hall today and Seteth completely reamed me for it. How was _I_ supposed to know it’s pronounced like ‘keyhole’? Did _you_ think it was pronounced like that?”

“It was probably in the packet,” says Felix, who, as previously mentioned, really only skimmed the packet to find the patron saint of warriors and then never opened it again, and perhaps is not the most reliable source of information on the saints, or the confirmation ceremony, or anything really. Graciously, Sylvain decides not to mention that, either.

* * *

Sylvain soon finds out that the seminar they all take in preparation for the confirmation ceremony is really designed for the students who _hadn’t_ grown up in the Church of Seiros. Growing up as a noble, he’d spent every Sunday staring up at the stained-glass windows of the church in Gautier; the prayers and hymns come naturally to him, because he’s spent the last twenty years of his life hearing them weekly. He and Felix, along with most of the other nobles, move on autopilot throughout the seminar, reciting prayers that are more muscle memory than anything at this point: _O Saint Seiros, defend us in battle, be our protection against the wickedness and snares of evil, blah blah blah, cast into hell all the evil spirits who prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen._

So all in all, class isn’t that hard. Students like Mercedes and Marianne, who practically live in the cathedral already, coast through easily. Dedue looks like he’s doing alright, despite the judgmental looks the priest leading the class shoots him once in a while (but Sylvain can never really tell what Dedue’s thinking, so he’d take that analysis with a grain of salt). Petra can pronounce all the words just fine, but always says them out of order. 

After prayers, they move on to learning about the Saints, and picking the patron saint that will guide their academic journey. Some, like Felix, have already picked theirs; some take the seminar as an opportunity to learn more about the saints and choose one who fits them best; and some, Sylvain suspects, just close their eyes and point at the list to pick one. 

By the end of their week of class, Sylvain has seen at least half of his classmates fall asleep or blatantly ignore the priest up front at some time or another. Linhardt sleeps, Claude and Hilda pass notes, Hubert stares into the distance like he’s plotting something; the only time everyone looks like they’re paying attention is when Lady Rhea, accompanied by Seteth, stops in to see how they’re progressing. (Sylvain makes sure to mispronounce _Cichol_ again, just to see Seteth’s reaction – it’s one of the few amusing moments of a very dull week.)

And so, united in boredom before the inter-House rivalry inevitably begins, the Officers’ Academy class of 1181 slogs their way through their introductory seminar. 

* * *

After what seems like an interminable length of time, the day of the ceremony finally arrives. Decked out in their dress uniforms, everyone lines up to process into the cathedral. In the pews, Felix spots his father, sitting next to Margrave Gautier and Count Galatea, surrounded by a scattering of Faerghan nobles. 

The students roll by in a blur of names, each stating their given name and their patron saint's: _My name is Claude Macuil. My name is Dimitri Indech. My name is Edelgard Seiros. My name is Felix Indech. My name is Marianne Cethleann_. Lady Rhea lays her hands on each student and anoints each of them with oil, drawing the Crest of Seiros on their foreheads. Finally, one very familiar redhead, the very last in line, steps up to the altar.

“My name,” Sylvain says — and he’s smirking, which Felix, given his years of friendship with Sylvain, thinks should make anyone aware that something _incredibly_ stupid is about to happen — “is Sylvain Sitchel.”

Seteth looks like he’s about to hurdle the altar and strangle Sylvain—the only thing that seems to be holding him back is Lady Rhea’s gentle yet firm hand on his arm. Felix gets the strong feeling that this is Sylvain’s ideal start to his time in the academy. 

Despite the fact that Sylvain probably just committed some mild form of sacrilege, Lady Rhea anoints him with the oil anyway. Sylvain tosses a two-fingered salute at her and Seteth, then saunters over to join the rest of the Blue Lions in their pews.

As Sylvain flops down next to him, grinning like the fool he is, Rhea begins her homily. As she drones on about being _good servants to the goddess_ and _giving your all for your House and your country_ and all the other chivalric tripe that she laid forth at Glenn’s confirmation ceremony, Felix thinks that it’s going to be a long year. But, he considers, as Sylvain elbows him in the side and jerks his chin towards Seteth’s scowling face, that at least things will never be boring with Sylvain around.

**Author's Note:**

> anyone else think about how sylvain's supports with seteth have big "inigo but with libra as his dad" vibes?
> 
> fun fact: i picked joan of arc as my confirmation saint because i thought it was really cool that she disguised herself as a guy to save france, which in hindsight explains a LOT about me as a person. my brother steven picked st. stephen because he just wanted to have the archbishop call his name "steven stephen", which also explains a LOT about him as a person.
> 
> talk to me on twitter about how garreg mach is basically a catholic school [@tadhanastar](https://twitter.com/tadhanastar)


End file.
